Big 10 Football Tour

Attending Madison on Halloween weekend leads anyone to miss a lot of the typical sights as you get so caught up on visiting the bars and checking out all of the interesting costumes. 

Up early Sunday morning, I tried to see as much of Madison as I could before going home to watch the Packers-Vikings matchup.

The capitol building lies at the high point of Madison and can be seen from almost anywhere in the city.  It appears to be the tallest building in all of Madison.

Once you've found the capitol building, you're pretty much set as the streets surronding it are filled with shops and restaurants.

While Madison is NOT one of the Big 10 campuses that sits on a Great Lake, it does have a lake on both sides of it.  This makes it that fun word that you learned in geography class, an isthmus.  In fact, Madison is the only major United States city built on an isthmus.

The Memorial Union is one of the places that hugs one of these lakes (Mendota).  The terrace outside between the lake and the building will be packed with students drinking and dining on some of the nicer days.

While I never received any apparel from the guy who runs this joint, I'll give him a shout out here.  You may or may not have heard of Wisconsin residents refer to themselves as "Sconnies" or being part of the "Sconnie Nation," but if you have, here is where you get the apparel.  They have some humorous shirts that poke fun at Brett Favre among others.  You can also get the sweet overalls shown below.

I went back on Sunday to walk around Camp Randall Stadium a bit more and this time spotted the Memorial Arch.  I figured that while I was checking out the football stadium, that I should drive by the basketball arena as well.  So, in the photo below, you've see the Kohl Center.

It appears that most of the happening spots are on State Street so I took some time to walk up and down on Sunday morning.  You could tell that many of the students were just plain miserable in recovering from the previous evening.

The construction/cleanup crews were out in full tilt trying to restore State Street to normalcy after a wild night.

Yet another fun stop at the student bookstore.  It appears that there were many disappointed Badger fans as former All-American Ron Dayne could not make it to a scheduled appearance.

You know, I think it is just plain amazing that Ron Dayne starred at Wisconsin, which is located in Dane County.

Some final Madison sights to leave you with:

The red castle-like building that is commonly referred to as "Bowser's Castle" as it looks like the enemy castle from the video game Super Mario Brothers.

The before and after photos of a Wisconsin house party.

The Orpheum Theather, where despite its run-down appearance, you can still see movies to this day.